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I have discovered that I’m not happy unless I have a project. It really doesn’t matter what the project is – I’m just a person who has to be working toward some type of goal. Mr. Scott is simply pleased that I’ve quit with the home improvement projects and moved on to genealogy and writing. Neither of those pursuits require his participation or the unexpected expense of a qualified electrician.

After the challenge of the NaNo Write, I took some time off from new writing projects. By the end of last November, I had four novels published and four more written. That was eight novels in about sixteen months. The four books waiting for edit were in various stages of beta read and two were nowhere near ready to go to the editor. I wasn’t burnt out, but I did need to regroup and take stock of where I was going. I had too many story lines and too many characters in my head to do a great job on the finish work.

Both of my editors have real lives and weren’t interested in working over the holidays, so we happily put everything on hold until mid-January. I stepped away from the books and worked on my genealogy for several weeks and then returned to the books with fresh eyes before sending them to the editors. Edits are their own source of stress and a different type of work. Rewriting is simply not as much fun as the original creation. But if you can get along with your editor, the work can be rewarding and the book is better because of that hard work. I like my editors and I appreciate what a challenge my writing can be for them. I am still overly fond of commas and simply uninterested in the proper use of the semicolon.

However, I’m now feeling the need to write something more than blurbs and blog posts. I think I have a story to tell and I have the opening. So, how to challenge myself this time? I have the basics, but not the details. I think I know where this new story is going, but I have no clue how it ends.

I’m giving myself sixty days. That’s starting with a basic idea of a character, a location, and a potential story line. I need to work my way through the character and story development and then do the outline. We know that I can write the basic book in about thirty days, but that was when I already had the story plotted and outlined. I’d had Saving Emily rolling around in my head for almost a year before I sat down and told it. I’ve had the beginning of this story in my head for all of about two weeks. That gives me until 15 May.

Yup! Crazy runs in the family and I’m about to prove I got my fair share…

Sixty days to get from the idea of the opening to completion of the first draft.
Target goal 65-75,000 words.
Yup! Crazy.

Referring to item seven and eight in my previous post, I have spent more than one morning on Amazon looking at product descriptions simply trying to figure out what I think makes a good blurb. What I discovered was that blurbs are like covers – some were great works of art and some were so God-awful they made me point and giggle. Blurbs vary greatly by genre as you might expect. After all the emotionally charged words that would intrigue a romance reader would hardly work well for a military action novel. I also discovered that some of the biggest writers in the world don’t even have a damn blurb.

I did find this to be an entertaining way to spend a morning. I decided to look at several different genres to see how the blurbs vary. I started with romance, knowing that the pointing and giggling would put me in a good humor. It did. However, it was also an incredible revelation to the variety of styles. As I went through the other genres I found many of the same unusual things. I’ll use romance as the examples – and no it’s not to pick on them, it’s because we all get the story line, so there’s no confusion.

Standard blurb:
Girl meets boy, reason they can’t be together, will their love be strong enough to survive the situation?”

Non-standard blurbs:

Bullet statements – I kid you not. I saw several instances where rather than write a paragraph, the author (or publisher) simply made a list of story points. I found this in several genres.
Ex:
Susie Q is rich and willful, but is unhappy because (fill in a reason)
Derek P is a self-made man who’s sick of the rich and willful.
John Q thinks his daughter Susie needs a life lesson and cuts her off.
Derek P hires Susie Q and sparks ensue when he finds out who she really is.
I have nothing against the book – it’s probably a well written romance, but this is not a blurb. This is a pitch to an editor: “I’ve written this story…” and then the four lines above. That may sell an editor, but it’s a lousy sales pitch for me as a reader.

The snippet: The author picks a particular bit of their story to use as their blurb. This is not a new style of blurb. We’ve been seeing this for years, but it’s still not the norm. Sometimes in romance, it’s a steamy lead in or a moment of conflict. In military or action, it’s the moment where the hero either faces his nemesis or is in danger of not surviving the conflict. I’d much rather see this than the bullet statement style. At least with this style, I can see if the writer is okay or just a superlative junkie.

The non-blurb:
The most annoying of all product descriptions is the one that doesn’t exist. This is where either the author (or more likely the editor) has inserted a review of the book.
Ex:
(Insert author name) has written another sweeping historical romance that will leave you breathless. More pretty prose about the author’s style and past magnificence, but nothing about the damn book.

If I already know the author I may not really need a blurb, but it annoys me to be stuck with a bunch of reviews and backslapping instead of something about the story.

Dear authors and publishers – a non-blurb is just freaking rude. If you think you don’t need one fine, don’t enter one, but don’t shove someone’s happy smoke up my tailpipe. That’s not a description. There’s a review section for that crap.

The only time I have ever found this useful is if the review is negative. I recently clicked onto an author’s new book to find a review in the product description that began with, “Mr. (author’s name) normally writes taut and exciting thrillers. This is not one of them.” I actually read the rest of the review then. The reviewer went on to say that the author (who he had become quite fond of from his earlier books) had become “hit or miss” in his recent releases and this was not one of the good ones. Now, what nimrod publisher posted that in the product description instead of the blurb? If I was the author, I’d be changing publishers.

After a long morning, I came to the simple conclusion that less is more when it comes to a blurb. Two to three sentences should be enough to get the reader interested. But, I also believe that simple is better. All the adjectives and adverbs in the world will not make your blurb better if you don’t have something interesting to begin with.

There are few things in the world that I hate more than writing the “product description” for my books. Better known as the blurb, this is that annoying little paragraph that we put on the back cover of our books so prospective readers have an idea what the book is about. It’s the most difficult task in the novel process as far as I’m concerned. What I believe I need is a professional blurb writer. Someone who can read my 80,000 words and condense my novel down to a short paragraph that is an interesting and exciting tease for my book. Of course, due to budget constraints, that simply isn’t going to happen.

So, what’s a girl to do? Well, I fell back on what’s worked for me in the past when I want to learn something:

1. Bitch, moan, and complain about my lack of skill.
2. Fall into a small depression about my lack of skill. Nothing serious, but a little brooding never hurt anyone.
3. Attempt to take the easy way out by simply writing something and seeing if my fat cat lazy muse will show up and help out.
4. Bitch, moan, and complain about my lack of skill and the muse’s vacation schedule.
5. Try multiple more times to create something interesting.
6. Complain on Facebook to my sympathetic friends about my lack of skill.
7. Spend a morning on Amazon looking at other people’s blurbs.
8. Denigrate the blurbs as possibly being worse than the one I wrote.
9. Bitch, moan, and complain about my lack of skill.
10. Throw everything out and write two sentences that sum up where the book is going without giving anything away.

So, let’s back up just a bit in the list to number five. I could recite many happy sayings about trying and failing, and how failure makes you stronger, and all that other goody two-shoes crap, but the truth is that I have never met an author who wrote a great blurb on the first try. We are simply too close to our work when we begin this process. We’ve spent a lot of times, writing and rewriting. Now we’re expected to compress all that work and time into a few sentences. That is so not happening for most of us.

Perhaps I’m doing this in the wrong order. Maybe I should write the blurb before I write the book. I can often tell someone what the book will be about before I write it and become overwhelmed by my characters. I know more than one writer who works this way, so perhaps I should give it a shot. Write the blurb and then put it away until the book is complete.

I’ll be talking about items number seven and eight in a separate post. There is simply too much to share about those steps to add into this post.

So where does a writer’s motivation or inspiration come from? And is motivation different than inspiration? Do you have to be inspired to get motivated? Or vice versa? We’re talking about what really gets you off your butt to write.

Motivation: noun. The reasons behind someone’s actions or behaviors.
The first synonym for motivation is inspiration.

Inspiration: noun. The process of being filled with a feeling or with the urge to do something.
The first synonym for inspiration is motivation.

I’ve often heard my writing buddies talk about their muse, but I’m not sure I have one. At some point in the past, I discussed the concept that muses (if they exist) needed to be treated like willful teenagers and beaten into submission. I could be wrong about that. Not the part about beating the willful teenager – just the part about them being a teenager. After writing a few books, I now believe that a muse would be more like a rather fat tomcat, lounging around until he feels the need to make noise, waste, a hairball, or more useless damn cats. The muse hangs about until they decide you need some inspiration and then drops it on you. And, much like a cat hacking up a hairball, that usually happens at some incredibly inopportune time.

Now, I fully admit to having voices in my head, and they are a bunch of chatty Cathy’s sometimes. But what is it that gets me off my butt to do this? No one forces me to come out here and sit down at this desk, but I’m here almost every day, working on something. Writing, rewriting, or just faking it until I make it.

In October, I accepted the challenge of the NaNoWrite, and I spent November accomplishing the goal of 50,000 words in a month. That novel has finished beta and will move into edit in the next quarter. But, finding my new plot has been slow. I had ideas, but no inspiration or motivation. Until now.

I was lurking on a message board and saw an editor chat for a publisher who shall remain nameless. Their particular genre is not my cup of tea, but the chats are often interesting and useful. There was discussion going on about what they were looking for in character and storyline. It had to do with the idea of an alpha male and the wallflower female, who is really much stronger than she thinks. She brings out the best in him and we can see his true self, and she learns to get off the wall. Ugh. Really? However, one of the questions was, what if she’s only a wallflower because she’s a tomboy?

Bingo! A scene flashed into my head and I have the concept for the book. There is a real appeal to a “Fish Out of Water” story. Most of us can relate to that. Lord knows that I’ve been one more than once. I pounded out the opening 1000 words yesterday and today I’m laying out the plot line.

So was I motivated or inspired? I don’t really know and I’m not really sure I care. But that lazy fat cat is off the couch and on the move.

Mr. Scott has not always been a fan of my name choices. While he doesn’t read my books, he does have to suffer through my discussion of those books and characters. Our first real conversation about names occurred when he read the first two chapters of Protecting Parker.

Mr. Scott asked, “What kind of a name is Parker for a girl? And, Gray! Who knows anyone named Gray?”
I pointed out that Parker Posey is a well-known actress, and that I knew several people named Gray. He was not appeased.

When the discussion about Blood Link was ongoing, he asked me about my female lead in the first book. “Why do you always pick guy names for girls? First Parker and now Sam.”

I hadn’t realized that I’d done that. I simply always loved the name Samantha and the nickname of Sam. I can rarely say Sam without following it with the name Elliott. I loved the name Samantha in the same way that I loved the name Parker. I’m not sure I could explain it beyond that.

“Can’t your women have normal names?”
Well of course they can, but when we read, we often want to be taken out of our own mundane lives. Most of us weren’t fond of our names at some point. Who hasn’t wanted to have an exotic name? I personally never really wanted exotic. I always wanted to be named Ann. It has a nice clean ring to it and sounds “regal.” My brother once confessed that he’d always wanted to be named Lance. Lance? Really?

Mr. Scott, to his credit, pointed out that some of my favorite actors as well as some of the most interesting and sexy people in the world had very normal names. Sam Elliott (well duh, I already stole that one), Hugh Jackman, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, etc. for men. Sandra Bullock, Rebecca DeMorney, Sophia Loren, and Catherine Zeta-Jones for the ladies. The first names are, to me, solid names that transcend age and trends.

When I started laying out A Shared Fear and planning the next vampire books, I sat down one evening and asked Mr. Scott for first names. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but when I pressed him about what he would have proposed for a girl’s name if he had a daughter, he came up with Yvonne. I hated it! But I’d asked, so I had to figure out a way to use it. I wound up shortening it to Evie, so Yvonne (Evie) Marie Duncan was born for A Shared Fear. She needed a strong male counterpart, so I went with simple and came up with Joe Graves.

Mr. Scott was on a roll after that, so I took notes as he came up with some great names that you’ll be seeing in future books. You’ll meet Brenda Livingstone in my next stand-alone novel Stuck in Korea Time, and Janice Bracken is the primary character in Saving Emily, both novels will be out in 2012.

Sadly, you will never see some of my favorite names as the lead characters in my books. My favorite name of Jack will appear often as a side character, but never as the lead. My father was named Jack and I could never write a love scene using the name. The same for the male names of Scott, Dean, Darryl, Dwight, Chuck, or Pat. Or the female names of Heather, Tonya, Jamye, Jennifer, Marcia, or Ramona. These fall in my too close for comfort category, since they are friends, family, and beta readers. While I have quite a few other names that might fall in that category, they are common enough that I can work around them. Still, most of those names will only get used for supporting characters.

The other thing you won’t see me doing is using the popular romantic names. I swear to God that as soon as Grey’s Anatomy premiered there were a thousand books with the names Derek and Meredith. I can barely hear those names now without cringing. Check out the romance rack and you’ll notice that they all have “interesting” names. I hadn’t really noticed it until Mr. Scott pointed it out and reminded me that most people in the world didn’t go through life with exciting names.

While a name is important to your character – it won’t matter one bit if the character isn’t interesting. So pick something you like and get to writing!